


Out of Dust (TO BE REWRITTEN)

by periferal



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Backstory, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, Lie Ren is a good bro, Multi, Possible Romance, Post-Volume 3, Team as Family, Unhealthy Relationships, possible OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6400261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of stories set in the months after the battle of Beacon. How people recover and put themselves back together after traumatic events (or not).</p><p>Updated occasionally.<br/>----<br/>Update: I'm writing the prequel to this, and will eventually rewrite this story itself.<br/>So I'm marking it complete, and not updating this specific version, unless my muse suddenly strikes again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter occurs some time after the events of the following ones.
> 
> I'm not sure when, exactly, yet.

“Blake!”

She's cornered, or basically cornered. Somehow she's left herself only one way of escape (up) and she doesn't recognize the voice of the person calling her name, a guy definitely though. She turns. “Ren?”

Lie Ren, apparently unarmed and alone, is standing, hands open at his sides, looking as though he is about to call her name again. 

Blakes resists the urge to go for her weapon, seriously considering making a preemptive shadow clone.

“Yang was asking for you when she woke up,” Ren says.

“I can't...” she says, trailing off. The two of them barely talked, before everything went bad again. She doesn't know if she wants to talk to him now, either, in this alley somewhere in the closed off part of Vale. “I have to go,” she says.

To her surprise, he steps out of her way. “You don’t have to come back yet.”

She doesn't move. “Where’s Nora?” she asks. She’d talked to her a few times, because Nora talked to everyone.

“With Jaune,” Ren says. “You aren’t to blame.”

Blake makes an abortive gesture, still resisting grabbing her weapon. “You don't know that,” she says. “You can't know that.”

She still doesn't leave, and Ren doesn't seem like he's going to say anything in response.

“Why you?” she asks him. “And why alone?”

He stays quiet long enough that Blake begins to consider seeing if he was serious about letting her walk away.

“Jaune is not okay,” he says, eventually. “And Yang-”

She doesn’t run past him. She goes up, back to the rooftops. Anyway, he basically told her to. He didn’t tell her to stay.

She swears she hears him interrupt himself and say something like “Be safe.”


	2. Handholds

The house they bring him to is quiet.

Someone, Qrow, maybe, tells him that it’s Ruby and Yang’s house, and that the blond man who gives him a tiny, sad smile that almost could be understanding is Taiyang, their dad. 

Yang he hasn’t seen since they were all herded into the airship, when she woke up and he watched her exhausted panic at her arm being gone, her asking for where Blake was, where- well where  _ she _ was. And Ruby hasn’t woken up yet, which is okay, apparently, it’s only been half a day since the light and the dragon and  _ that _ . 

The inside of his head feels like what the inside of the coliseum sounded like in the seconds after the the nevermore started knocking on the barrier. 

Ren is sitting cross legged on the cot they’ve set up next to the bed where he’s sitting, and Nora has curled up on the other bed, apparently attempting sleep. Qrow and Sun have left the three of them alone in the room, with a promise of food later that he only barely listened to. 

Maybe he should go to sleep.

Nora stretches, having apparently given up on that herself, and sits up. “Jaune?” she asks. 

He looks at her, unsure if he’s supposed to say anything. 

The silence lingers, and even Nora doesn’t seem to be able to think of anything to say for a while.

He wasn’t injured, Jaune realizes. Both Ren and Nora were hurt, if not anything more serious than injuries caused by minor aura depletion, and Yang is, well, and Ruby is unconscious and Blake is gone and is  _ she _ ... Jaune’s mind goes blank, and he completely against his will lets out a small noise, one that he can’t really understand as coming from himself. He wasn’t injured, because she-

It doesn’t quite feel like he’s the one sobbing, even though he can feel his chest heaving and the wetness on his cheeks that appears all of a sudden. His mouth is open and he is making noise but none of it feels solid. He’s sitting with his legs out in front of him, legs bent, and he digs his fingers into his sides to remind himself that he isn’t going to dissipate into nothing and blow away.

He’s crying, and to his surprise it’s Ren, not Nora, who first sits down next to him on the bed and pulls Jaune into a hug, and Jaune leans his head back against Ren’s chest, still shaking. 

Moments later, Nora joins in the hug, though she shoves herself next to Jaune and leans on Ren, so that they’re all three sort of tangled together. 

It doesn’t make Jaune feel much better, but he does feel more grounded, and he moves his hands from his sides to holding onto the two of them. 

He exhales, and closes his eyes. His sobs decrease in volume, as he gradually stills, still clutching Ren’s arm to himself, his other arm tangled with Nora’s. He still doesn’t think he can fall asleep yet, but the quiet in his head is of a different kind than that of a few moments ago. An almost peace, instead of emptiness. 

For a moment, he even almost forgets that someone is missing, until it crashes back down on him and he, completely against his control, starts to sob again. Nora curls closer to him and Ren’s grip on him tightens, and he head falls forward, eyes still closed. 

They stay like that for a while, and Jaune listens to Ren's heart beating steadily and Nora's breathing. 

They're alive, and that means something.

 


	3. What Hope Looks Like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: There be the Qrow/Taiyang here. 
> 
> Because it's sad. 
> 
> :D

Taiyang finds the three of them asleep, fully clothed, on the middle bed. Judging by how Nora and Jaune are almost entirely on top of Ren, this was probably not an intentional thing. It’s probably a good thing, though, considering the day they’ve all had, especially Jaune.

He debates whether or not he should wake them up, even though it’s late in the evening by this point. He stands in the doorway to the room, hand still keeping the door pushed open. Before he can decide, he sees Ren slowly open his eyes, lifting his head a bit.

“Shhhh-” he says, and Taiyang nods. He can picture Ren bringing a finger to his lips, but the kid’s arms are obviously kind of stuck.

“Ruby’s awake,” he whispers, and Ren nods. A few seconds go by, and Ren doesn’t answer him with words. Instead, he closes his eyes and relaxes back against the pillows. He’s holding Jaune and Nora, and Taiyang has to smile a little. 

He removes his hand from the door, stepping back, allowing it to swing shut. He shakes his head as an unwanted pleasant memory appears in the back of his mind. It wasn’t the same, of course, Raven had long since gone her own way by the time of Summer’s death, but for a moment he can almost feel an arm around his waist, a head on his shoulder. Qrow smiling without drink or sarcasm.

Taiyang shakes his head again, with more violence this time, and he kneads at his right temple with the fingers of his left hand.

He straightens, dropping his hand. Of all the times for those memories to resurface... he realizes he’s still standing outside the room, and he forces himself to make his way to Yang’s room. He’s going to check on her again, and he’s going to be okay for her.

He will not be like he was after Summer died, not this time. He owes his daughters, and their friends, that, even if he appears to have failed to keep them safe.

When he opens the door to Yang’s room, she has either finally fallen asleep or is faking that she has for his sake. He really hopes it’s the former. 

“She won’t talk to me,” Ruby says from behind him. Taiyang hastily pulls the door shut, instead of just letting it swing, and turns to look at her.

He sighs. “She’s been really badly hurt,” he says, and hesitates.

“I’m her sister though,” Ruby says, “and I know Blake’s being stupid but I need to talk to her. I need to know she’s okay.” Her fists her clenched, and Taiyang is both glad that Qrow took Crescent Rose off her when he brought her down from Beacon tower, and horrified at himself for even considering- nevermind, that is still not what’s important here.

“She’s not okay,” Qrow says, having apparently snuck up on both of them. Taiyang turns to glare at him, and he shrugs. “Ruby, she’s lost her arm.”

Taiyang watches as she hesitates, standing between him and Qrow. “But...” she says, looking down. 

“She might never be really okay again,” Taiyang says. Qrow meets his gaze, and Taiyang shakes his head. That’s a conversation he is not yet prepared to have in front of either of his daughters. 

Ruby nods, having thankfully not noticed the exchange. “I'm hungry, I think,” she says. “I'm going to go to the kitchen.” She disappears in a flurry of rose petals that vanish as they touch the ground. 

Taiyang doesn’t want to have the conversation Qrow obviously wants to have, but he isn’t given much choice as Qrow grabs him by the arm and nearly drags him to the bedroom Ruby doesn’t know they share. Qrow shuts the door behind them both and drops Taiyang’s arm, staring at him expectantly. 

“How come you’re the one insisting on the emotional conversation?” he asks, “you never do that.”

“Summer’s dead,” Qrow says instead of answering, and Taiyang is forced to brace himself against the door as he loses balance, surprising himself. He hasn’t had that sort of reaction in a while. “You need to get better at hearing her name.”

Taiyang wants to argue that, and so he stands again, staring in the general direction of Qrow’s face. “I did get better,” he says, “and then history repeated itself.”

“Exactly. And you can’t let anyone know that, neither of us can.”

“I thought you were the one for blunt truths and revelations?” Taiyang says, and Qrow clenches his fists. 

“They’re already all hurting they don’t need to hear about  _ this _ ,” he gestures between them, “and so I’m not going to say anything to Ruby.”

Taiyang laughs, a small, choked sound. “You’re acting as though I was going to, Qrow,” he says, “My daughters have been through my sadness once, they don’t need it again. Especially not Yang. I wasn’t thinking of telling Ruby then- it’s just, it seems she’s even more like her mom then we thought.”

“Yeah,” Qrow says, and he looks even more tired than usual. He moves to sit heavily on the bed. “I’d hoped things would have stayed peaceful until at least they were no longer children,” he says, and Taiyang goes to sit next to him. 

“You, hoping that? That sounds like something I’d pretend,” Taiyang says, and Qrow scowls at him. 

“I’m not entirely just a cynical drunk,” Qrow says, bringing up a hand to Taiyang’s face. “I can be delusionally hopeful about the future, too.” After a moment where neither of them move, he gives a tiny, bitter facsimile of a smile. “At least, that’s what I think this is.”

 


End file.
